


Stop This

by Wreck



Series: 20 fics in 20 days [10]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: John's Reichenbach Feels, M/M, Sherlock Holmes Returns after Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-16 00:07:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1324300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wreck/pseuds/Wreck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stop this, he had said all those months ago staring at Sherlock’s grave. He repeats it to himself as he wakes with a half choked scream, reaching out for a ghost in the dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stop This

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a submission for the Sherlock Returns mini-bang but it was never completed, nor never submitted. I'm fond of some parts, so I thought I'd finally revisit it.
> 
> Un beta'd. All mistakes are mine.

Sometimes in John’s dreams the world explodes around him. Sometimes it’s the destruction of war and he thinks himself back in Afghanistan, awaking in a tangle of sweat soaked sheets. Sometimes it’s the crack of a gun and the shatter glass, and he feels the recoil of the gun in his mind, the way that one feels the ghost of the ocean after a long time on a ship.

Mostly it’s the echo of sound, the imagined impact of bone against asphalt, the resonance of watching his best friend fall to his death. 

Stop this, he had said all those months ago staring at Sherlock’s grave. He repeats it to himself as he wakes with a half choked scream, reaching out for a ghost in the dark. 

 

John makes it through his first year without Sherlock, but it almost kills him. He spends the first nights in Sherlock’s bed, clinging to the other man’s duvet in a gesture of intimacy that was never present when he was alive. He buries his face in the soft down and inhales the scent that haunts the pillow. 

At night he imagines himself as a story that children whisper to each other by torch light under blanket forts. He thinks of them whispering about the mad genius who unexpectedly vanished and who left behind the ghost he created. He looks at his sallow face in the mirror and he thinks his fantasies might not be too far off. 

As the months pass he begins to box up Sherlock’s old books and brings them to the used bookshop down the street. At first he dithers in the doorway and leaves with the box still full. One by one, he starts to to sell them, feeling a small prick of loss with each transaction. Months go by and the owner says that one person has bought nearly every book. A collector, he says, and asks John if he has any other rare tomes. Thinking that the books were gathering dust on some back shelf somewhere while waiting for phantom hands to hold them again, John panics at the thought of a real, tangible person owning Sherlock’s old belongings; the remaining books stay in 221B. 

Eventually, as the year wanes, he builds a routine. He starts walking through the city, treading a familiar path through the park and around St. Bart’s, trying to work out the stiffness that begins to slowly creep back into his leg. Over time he starts running into the same people and strangers become familiar faces, become drinking buddies, become friends. 

 

When he first feels the prickles of someone watch him, he’s at a café sharing coffee with a new friend. She’s telling him some minutiae about her life, smiling over the rim of her mug, and one moment he’s laughing along and then next he is struck with certainty that someone is watching him. Not just the casual glances that go unnoticed, the way that your eyes fall upon someone as you sweep them across the room. No, John is acutely aware that he is the subject of someone’s attention. His friend looks at him with concern as he half rises out of his chair, scanning the café for a familiar face; he finds no one and the feeling slowly passes. 

These moments seem few and far between at first, but John becomes more and more aware. He feels eyes follow him as he boards the tube; he feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he buys the paper; he turns around quickly when he feels someone encroaching on his space, but finds himself alone with his trolley at Tesco. Every once in a while he spares a glance at the CCTV cameras, but they stopped following him a long time ago. 

He’s not one to just dismiss these passing moments without a second thought. With everything he’s seen and done in his life, with all the people he’s met, it’s hard not to be a bit paranoid. So he thinks it must be the long days that stretch into nights and the nights the stretch into centuries. It must be stress from restless sleep, and the slight discomfort of an eternally empty flat, hollow and echoing without the second person who once inhabited it’s space. It must be the long lingering loss that causes all shadows to waver and all heads to rotate as John passes them by. 

Stop this, he says to his own reflection, hands in a white-knuckle grip on the basin as he looks into his haunted eyes and he feels himself loose what hold he has on his emotions. 

Just because every silhouette and every face in the crowd blends together to form some facsimile of him, doesn’t mean you’re actually seeing Sherlock across London, he tells himself. It can’t be him – Sherlock died nearly 2 years ago. 

 

The Holidays arrive and with them old faces. Mrs. Hudson sweeps through with twinkle lights, and platters of food and biscuits, and shoves John into a Christmas jumper. And then Greg arrives with Molly, and the Married Ones from next door pop around. A few of his new friends show up with extra bottles of wine and more gingerbread than John knows what to do with. 

Before he quite knows what’s happening, John finds himself lost in a vivid memory of the last time a Christmas party was hosted at 221B. He tries to excuse himself, to remove himself from the crowd, hide away until his breath returns to normal and he stops looking around the room for a messy shock of hair visible above everyone else. But every time he makes for an exit, he finds another merry face dragging him into a conversation. 

A glass of mulled wine gets pressed into his hands and as the party continues around him, the panic crawling up John’s throat slowly releases. He often revels in his moments of dislocation and is reluctant to fight against them, but he’s getting better. He’s getting better at pushing away the old memories and centering himself in the present. 

And so the evening passes. 

Soon everyone is stacking plates in the kitchen and gathering their coats. Hugs are exchanged and John sees everyone to the door, glad that he doesn’t have to step into the snow filled night. Later as he settles down with a cup of tea and a satisfied sigh, he is startled by an urgent knocking at the door. He does a quick sweep of the room, assuming that someone has left a purse or a phone behind and has come to collect it. He pulls the door open with a smile that quickly evaporates.

Stop this, he says to Sherlock when he appears, gaunt and wet, standing in the doorway of 221B as if he’d only been gone for a few hours. 

Ignoring John’s comment, Sherlock strides into the flat, takes in the changes that have been made in the two years he’s been gone, and looks as if he wants to comment but keeps his opinions uncharacteristically to himself. Instead he throws himself into his old favourite chair and launches straight into an account of his adventures taking down Moriarty’s criminal web across Europe. 

Half way through an anecdote that puts Sherlock back in London nearly a year before, back when John was still struggling through his day to day life without his best friend, John pushes himself out of his own chair and walks out of the room without a backwards glance, slamming his bedroom door shut with a satisfying thud. He hears the once familiar movement of another person in the flat, but it’s not a comfort the way he thought it would be when he wished for those noises during the long nights. Instead the noise sounds foreign and strange and John presses a pillow over his ear when he tries to fall asleep. 

 

John spends a lot of time glaring at Sherlock over the next few days and Sherlock doesn’t seem to realize that there is anything wrong with pretending to be dead for the better part of 2 years. He is completely unaffected by John’s pointed glances at his once pristine kitchen, now cluttered in dust covered gear pilfered from St. Bart’s laboratories. He throws himself across the couch, letting his dressing gown flutter around him, bored already, as if hours in his old flat could never compare to the nearly two years of his cloak and dagger operation.

The worst, however, is how everyone reacts: Greg gives him a sturdy handshake that turns into an awkward half hug; Mrs. Hudson burst into tears and disappears into 221A, returning hours later still sniffling but with a plate of chocolate biscuits; and Mycroft, who appeared in the flat just as suddenly as his brother, had just quirked an eye at John over his newspaper in such a way that indicated that he knew all along. 

John doesn’t understand how their friends can just accept that he’s back so easily. How they can just re-open their arms, re-open their lives to the man that, for so long, convinced them he was dead. 

He makes it three days before he snaps. 

Stop this, he repeats, throwing a punch at Sherlock’s high cheekbone, and grimacing in satisfaction as his knuckles connect. 

Sherlock staggers, more in shock than in pain, bringing his fingers up to his face and pulling them back to check for blood. There’s none, but John is pleased to see Sherlock’s cheek already swelling. 

He takes a step forward and swings again, and he’s fighting, yelling as his fists finally make contact with Sherlock: bitten of words, half forgotten thoughts, a litany of things he’s wanted to say since Sherlock left, and even more he’s wanted to say since he’s returned. And Sherlock just stands there and takes it, hands at his sides and lets blow after blow land. 

Finally, John sags and catches his breath as the fight in him fades away. 

Sherlock takes a step forward and John straightens his back, his muscle memory from his time in the military kicking in, and he slowly raises his eyes to meet Sherlock’s. Sherlock takes another step forward, and in a flash his hands dart out and grab John’s wrists, pinning them to his sides. 

John’s posture straightens even further. Sherlock can’t intimidate him, and John won’t back down. A few punches is the least of what Sherlock deserves. But the look in Sherlock’s eye has John confused again, wondering what Sherlock deduced from his angry confessions. 

And Sherlock is still stepping forward, crowding into John’s space and forcing John to take a step backwards. And another. And then another until Sherlock swings his arms up and pins John against the wall. John looks into Sherlock’s stormy eyes and braces himself for a punch that never lands. 

Instead John feels the whisper of Sherlock’s mouth ghosting over his neck, murmuring, not excuses or explanations as he would have expected, but admissions and apologies. And then there’s more pressure and no more words and Sherlock’s pressing his lips against John’s neck, blazing a trail of not quite kisses towards John’s jaw. Sherlock releases one of John’s arms and sides his own down to cup John’s face before closing that final distance between them. 

And then they’re kissing. John feels like all the air has been punched out of his chest but he puts everything he has into his kiss. He wants Sherlock to feel all the years of friendship, anger, loss, but also the heart wrenching relief caused by his return. He puts it all into his kiss as he clings to Sherlock like he’s the only real thing in the world – and in this moment, maybe he is.

Don’t stop, he gasps as Sherlock pulls back slightly, the long lines of his body still caging John against the wall. 

And Sherlock looks down at John, studying him intently before a small smile appears on his lips. He shakes his head, as if saying, don’t be an idiot. John smiles, too, as he stares into Sherlock's unusually open and honest eyes, and then reaches up to pull Sherlock’s back into another kiss. 

 

And things aren’t always simple and neither man is always easy to be around, but all that matters is that, in the end, they never stop kissing.


End file.
